Souvenir Mining Spoon Ellison Hoist Lead SD | SOUVENIR MINING SPOON ELLISON HOIST LEAD SD - Sterling silver spoon with engraved bowl showing mine buildings and marked ELLISON HOIST LARGEST IN THE WORLD LEAD, S.D. with handle showing miner and gold pan at top, cattle below that, and a miner with pick below that, marked SOUTH DAKOTA mid-handle
to bowl, 5 7/8 in. long, reverse marked Sterling (By 1895, the Homestake Mining Company of Lead, SD recognized the need for a new, larger shaft at the mine due to its growth and expansion and the proximity of the current shafts - the Golden Star, the Golden Prospect, and the B&M - to valuable ore pockets. Construction of the Ellison Shaft on the General Ellison mineral claim began in 1895. Construction on the headframe, hoist house and crusher room got underway in 1897. The shaft was located across from the preexisting shafts on Gold Run gulch. A 900 foot tramway was built across the gulch to haul ore from the Ellison to the Homestake Mills. The entire shaft, headframe, hoist, crushing plant and tramway were completed on January 1, 1902, costing approximately one million dollars. The Ellison hoist was the wonder of the age. It had hoisting engines with a capacity for 3,000 feet; crusher engines with capacity for six No. 6 Gates crushers; a compressor with capacity for 250 drills, and another compressor for the tramway and underground motors. A compressed air motor, hauling 28 steel bottom-dumping cars, containing four tons of ore each, operated between the Ellison hoist and the mills of the Homestake Mining Company, over a steel bridge 100 feet high. The Ellison shaft had three compartments. In two of them double-decked cages were operated, each deck accommodating two cars, holding a ton of ore each; the third compartment contained man-ways, air-pipes, etc. At the start of the 20th century, the Ellison hoist and a duplicate hoist at the Anaconda copper mine in Butte, MT, along with the great hoist of the Calumet & Hecla copper mine in Michigan, which raised ore from a shaft more than one mile in depth, were the most powerful mine hoists known. The Ellison hoist had no peer on a gold mine anywhere in the world. The hoist building, housing the machinery of the Ellison equipment, was 350 feet long by 100 feet in width, and 80 feet in height over the central portion. The hoist engine was built by the Union Iron Works of San Francisco, CA. It had two steam cylinders 30 by 72 inches and two steel reels 16 feet in diameter, which wound and payed out a flat steel cable seven inches wide by a full inch in thickness. The two cables were 3000 feet in length each. The hoist engine was partitioned off in the big building with a glass front toward the shaft. In this compartment were placed two small air compressor engines and auxiliaries for handling and governing the movements of the great machine. The clutches, post brakes, disc brakes and reverse gear were operated by compressed air and were entirely controlled by a set of three levers and one pedal, conveniently placed on an elevated platform from which the engineer had a full view of all the machinery and the shaft. When ore was supplied sufficient to keep the hoist moving, eight tons of ore were raised to the surface every two minutes; three top men dumped the cars, feeding the ore to four No. 6 Gates crushers and returned the empties to the cage. In operation, 5,760 tons of ore were moved every 24 hours. The boiler capacity furnishing the steam power for the hoist consisted of eight Scotch marine boilers with a total capacity of 1,600 horse power. These boilers were made in the shops of W. J. Solbcrg & Son, of La Crosse, WI. Over the next several decades, many buildings were constructed around the headframe to support operations. On the evening of July 10, 1930, tragedy struck the Ellison Shaft. A fire ignited from overheated pipes in the air compressor room shortly before 8 pm. Within minutes, the headframe and many smaller buildings nearby were rapidly burning. Two men trapped in the shaft were killed. The loss of these two lives and the destruction of the Ellison Shaft were truly devastating. The hoist, headframe and shaft were a mass of wreckage, debris, and steel beams. The rebuild started almost immediately and was complete in February 1931.)